Thursday, August 25, 2005

I am currently storyboarding Generator, and have come across a problem. Do I layout each camera angle, or the overview of the shot? As it stands right now, I have 6 different camera angles/shots for the first scene. I'm wondering if I should just show the scene as I picture it, then work within that framework once I begin shooting? Or am I supposed to be this obsessive with it, and break it down from wide shot, to Cl/U, then to Medium shot...ect..? I guess that could be kept for the actual shot list. Anyone have a semi educated opinion on how in depth storyboards are supposed to be??

If you're shooting on DV my advice would be to storyboard (use it as a blueprint as you would an outline for a screenplay) as you see the movie in your head but shoot plenty of coverage. That's pretty much the beauty of DV as you don't have to worry about the footage. So get your master shot but then cover your reverse shots so that you're covered when you get to the edit.

The key is to have plenty of options in the editing room. When I was at film school a director I was friendly with swore by yelling "action" five seconds after the cameras started rolling and yelling "cut" five seconds after the last line of dialogue, so that he had plenty of space to make that cut. His crew would be looking at him with these confused expressions. He was an awesome editor though, so he already and a sense of the “space” he would need to work with in the editing room.